Ms Caron McCaffrey:

As I mentioned, the national forensic mental health service provides us with an excellent inreach service. It is in all of our prisons bar three. So we do have a difficulty in terms of forensic mental health inreach services in Cork Prison, Limerick Prison and Castlerea. In 2016, the HSE did sanction the recruitment of forensic psychiatrists for those prisons but they have not been in a position to fill those posts so we do have a significant issue in those prisons. Where we do have an inreach service from the national forensic mental health service there is a team of doctors and nurses who come from the CMH who provide the appropriate care and oversight. I would like to mention our own staff, who do an amazing job in terms of assisting people who are suffering from mental illness in prison, the compassion and the humanity that is displayed by our discipline staff and our own internal nursing staff, in addition to the national forensic mental health service.